The capital city of Bangladesh, situated in the eastern part of the geographical entity known as the Bengal Basin, is Dhaka. The word Dhaka, when used as a place name, is a noun, and it is a unique application of that word. That word has not been used anywhere else to name a place. Apart from having its use as a proper noun, the word ‘Dhaka’ finds its place in Bengali language dictionaries as an adjective, and that is the predominant use of that word. Many experts have put forward a number of explanations regarding the evolution of that place name. All those explanations are derived ones, i.e., none of those explanations can relate that name to that place in a directly meaningful manner. With the intervention of his ‘Wisp’ in his cerebral journey, Naru, the main character of this series of books, stumbled upon the idea that, deep in the past, there could have existed an island-mountain at the centre of the place that is currently known as ‘Bengal Basin’. The most famous island-mountain in history is known as 'Atlantis', as described by Greek philosopher Plato. The geological and geographical settings of the Bengal Basin can almost seamlessly fit into the description of Atlantis. The place-name ‘Dhaka’, may be explained satisfactorily and without the application of the idea of being derived, when the concept of a drowned island-mountain is introduced in that geography. In that situation, ‘sonar Bangla’, ‘the golden Bengal’, the other iconic phrase of Bengal, becomes a reflection of reality rather than a metaphor. Naru undertook a cerebral journey to find the validity of this idea in the available facts from various lines of study.

This study is an attempt to show how religious, kinship and factional ties cut across class alignments, leading to the communalization of class struggle between the peasants and the exploiting classes in East Bengal during 1920-1947. "During a substantial stay in some East Bengal villages in the summer of 1971, when East Pakistan was in the traumatic process of being transformed into Bangladesh, it first dawned upon me that peasants were not stupid, devoid of political consciousness. Discussions with different types of peasants revealed that at least the upper echelons were aware of the implications of the liberation struggle for Bangladesh and the superpower involvement in it. Richard Nixon and Indira Gandhi were familiar names. Ordinary peasants often quoted the Bengali news readers and commentators of the BBC world service and the Voice of America. Well-to-do peasants who owned transistor radio sets regularly tuned into the British, American and Indian radio stations. Many inquisitive and worried peasants asked me (then a fresh graduate from Dhaka University) how their cherished Sonar Bangla (golden Bengal) would improve their socio-economic conditions. Many peasants also took part in the liberation struggle as members of the Mukti Bahini or freedom fighters. Almost everyone, with a few exceptions who collaborated with the Pakistan armed forces, was a keen supporter of Bangladesh. After the emergence of Bangladesh, things did not change to the expectations of the masses, but rather deteriorated so much that Henry Kissinger is said to have coined the phrase ''bottomless basket"" as a denotation for Bangladesh, because of the rampant corruption of a big section of the Bengali bourgeoisie at that time. I was provoked to write the history of the peasants' glorious role in the Liberation Struggle which was being overshadowed by claims and counter-claims of heroism and sacrifice by members of the privileged, parasitical urban elites. This work may be regarded as a prelude to the history of the freedom struggle that eventually led to the creation of Bangladesh. This is an attempt to shed light on the peasant politics, almost synonymous with Muslim politics in the region, during the significant period between 1920 and 194 7 when East Bengal was going through the political process that culminated in the creation of East Pakistan in 194 7."

Bangladesh is currently ranked as one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world. In Threatening Dystopias, Kasia Paprocki investigates the politics of climate change adaptation throughout the South Asian nation. Drawing on ethnographic and archival fieldwork, she engages with developers, policy makers, scientists, farmers, and rural migrants to show how Bangladeshi and global elites ignore the history of landscape transformation and its attendant political conflicts. Paprocki looks at how groups craft economic narratives and strategies that redistribute power and resources away from peasant communities. Although these groups claim that increased production of export commodities will reframe the threat of climate change into an opportunity for economic development and growth, the reality is not so simple. For the country's rural poor, these promises ring hollow. As development dispossesses the poor from agrarian livelihoods, outmigration from peasant communities leads to precarious existences in urban centers. And a vision of development in which urbanization and export-led growth are both desirable and inevitable is not one the land and its people can sustain. Threatening Dystopias shows how a powerful rural movement, although hampered by an all-consuming climate emergency, is seeking climate justice in Bangladesh.

Following the tradition and style of the acclaimed Index Islamicus, the editors have created this new Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World. The editors have surveyed and annotated a wide range of books and articles from collected volumes and journals published in all European languages (except Turkish) between 1906 and 2011. This comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for everyone involved in the study of material culture in Muslim societies.

A historical study.

Papers presented at a seminar organized by Bangladesh Itihas Samiti, from 11-13 Feb. 1998.